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QLogic Introduces Automated InfiniBand Fabric Optimization with
New HPC Management Tools
Virtual Fabrics, Adaptive Routing and Dispersive Routing Top Industry-Leading List
of Features that Ensure Maximum Efficiency and Performance in New InfiniBand Fabric
Software Release
ALISO VIEJO, Calif., May 19, 2010-Leveraging its unique, system-level understanding
of communications fabrics, QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC) has leapfrogged its
competition with InfiniBandÂ® Fabric Suite (IFS) 6.0, a new version of its fabric
management software package that enables users to obtain the highest fabric
performance, the highest communications efficiency, and the lowest management costs
for high performance computing (HPC) clusters of any size.
The exceptional price/performance delivered by HPC clusters has enabled companies to
build increasingly larger systems to handle their complex simulation requirements.
But larger clusters have unique management challenges: as the cluster scales,
communications among applications and nodes become more complex and the potential
for inefficiency, bottlenecks, and failures grows dramatically. IFS 6.0 incorporates
Virtual Fabrics configurations with application-specific Class-of-Service (CoS),
Adaptive Routing and Dispersive Routing, performance-enhanced versions of
vendor-specific MPI libraries, and support for torus and mesh network topologies.
The result is a comprehensive suite of advanced features that network managers can
use to maximize throughput, eliminate the effects of path congestion, and automate
Quality-of-Service (QoS) on a per-application basis, and, unlike other fabric
managers on the market, IFS 6.0's unique Adaptive and Dispersive Routing
capabilities actually increase network routing intelligence as the number of nodes
and switches scales.
"Effective fabric management has become the most important factor in maximizing
performance in an HPC cluster investment and as clusters scale, issues like
congestion mitigation and QoS can make a big difference in whether the fabric
performs up to its potential," said Addison Snell, president of InterSect 360
Research. "With IFS 6.0, QLogic has addressed all of the major fabric management
issues in a product that in many ways goes beyond what others are offering."
IFS offers the following key features:
* Virtual Fabrics combined with application-specific CoS, which automatically
dedicates classes of service within the fabric to ensure the desired level of
bandwidth and appropriate priority, is applied to each application. In addition,
the Virtual Fabrics capability helps eliminate manual provisioning of application
services across the fabric, significantly reducing management time and costs.
* Adaptive Routing continually monitors application messaging patterns and
selects the optimum path for each traffic flow, eliminating slowdowns caused by
pathway bottlenecks.
* Dispersive Routing load-balances traffic among multiple pathways and uses
QLogicÂ® Performance Scaled Messaging (PSM) to automatically ensure that packets
arrive at their destination for rapid processing. Dispersive Routing leverages the
entire fabric to ensure maximum communications performance for all jobs, even in
the presence of other messaging-intensive applications.
* Full leverage of vendor-specific message passing interface (MPI) libraries
maximizes MPI application performance. All supported MPIs can take advantage of
IFS's pipelined data transfer mechanism, which was specifically designed for MPI
communication semantics, as well as additional enhancements such as Dispersive
Routing.
* Full support for additional HPC network topologies, including torus and mesh as
well as fat tree, with enhanced capabilities for failure handling. Alternative
topologies like torus and mesh help users reduce networking costs as clusters scale
beyond a few hundred nodes, and IFS 6.0 ensures that these users have full access
to advanced traffic management features in these complex networking environments.
This unique combination of features ensures that HPC customers will obtain maximum
performance and efficiency from their cluster investments while simplifying
management.
"With our long history as a key developer of connectivity solutions for large-scale
Fibre Channel, Ethernet and InfiniBand networks, QLogic uniquely appreciates the
importance of fabric management in HPC environments," said Jesse Parker, vice
president and general manager, Network Solutions Group, QLogic. "By automating
congestion management, load balancing, and class-of-service assignments, IFS 6.0 is
the first product that delivers the tools network managers need to get the most out
of their InfiniBand fabric and compute cluster investments."
"Clients using high-performance computing clusters need more efficient systems and
better resource utilization, while reducing operating costs," said Glenn Keels,
director of marketing, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure organization, HP. "The
combination of HP Cluster Platforms and QLogic InfiniBand Fabric Suite enables our
clients to achieve the best results possible for their most demanding
high-performance computing applications."

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